A Thousand Eyes
by he.who.writes.things
Summary: A city in ruins. An army deployed to take it back. A chain of events set in motion which will drown the sector in blood and fire. It is the grim darkness of the far future. There is only war.
1. Planetfall at Midday

Corporal Akwete Ademola

Three Battalion of the Seventh Albyonian made planetfall at midday, the cargo hold of the converted grain hauler packed with near enough 1,000 women. Elements from the Ninth Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts and Sixty-Second Albyonian had secured the spaceport earlier that day, and now it was time for the Light Foot of the Seventh to reinforce them. The spaceport was secure, but the enemy knew what they were doing when it came to fortifying a world and the anti-air emplacements were elsewhere.

There was something of a sense of fatalism in the hold; there always was on these drops. At any moment, a lucky stream of high-energy lasfire could punch through the hold and obliterate half a company, or an air-to-air missile from one of the planet's many heavy zeppelins could elude their aging point defense, or the systems could just crap out and drop the whole lot of them like hot coals.

Hence, the fatalism. It was hard to shake.

Akwete Ademola looked over at the person next to her. The poor girl was shaking, praying to a little amulet she held in clasped hands. Akwete frowned. "You. Amulet. Name?" The trooper gave a start.

"Uh, Imari. Private Imari."

"Your first name is Private?"

"N-no Corporal. Siti Imari."

"Siti. That's a nice name."

"Th-thank you, Corporal."

"Siti, where is your rifle?" Siti fished out a freshly-stamped lasrifle from the luggage rack. "Keep it with you. If the ship goes down, and you somehow survive, the last thing you want is to be fishing around for your weapon. If you're feeling nervous, check it. Knowing your equipment is in order makes you feel a bit better." Siti nodded and began to check the weapon with nervous hands. "And tuck the amulet away in a pocket. It's shiny, it'll give away your position."

The hauler made it - barely - to the ground. An airbursting shell had buckled the whole left side in, and the engines were venting hot gas from a dozen new holes after a close pass from a fighter, but they were alive. Squads spread out into the spaceport complex, moving to pre-assigned locations with absolute precision. The smell of cordite and heated ozone was thick in the air. Sweat and engine oil were close behind, followed by the oppressive heat - that had a smell all of its own, and a taste. Akwete had spent most of the drop walking Siti through recalibrating a rifle's focusing lens, and then they had moved on to small talk and a little strong coffee from a hip flask. Siti was from one of the larger islands in the archipelago surrounding the Byzantic desert, while Akwete came from a long line of farmers in a rural community on Albyon itself. They both liked music and crime novellas. Siti was in her platoon, but not her section. Akwete was a career soldier, but Siti had been conscripted; she hoped to one day settle on a conquered world and start a little farm. Akwete thought that sounded nice.

Akwete's section moved up through the rubble to a position held by a group of Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts, dressed in the distinctive, archaic carapace armour of that particular regiment and armed with the equally distinctive heavy arc guns. Akwete and the Janissary in command exchanged that long, brusque stare which NCOs have, concluded by a passive-aggressive nod which said 'okay, you're not going to be a liability'. Then Akwete put her troops front and centre while the Janissary put his men up on the rubble behind them.

It was going to be a long day.

The plan - from what Akwete had been able to figure out - was for some of Three Battalion to reinforce the spaceport while other elements moved to eliminate the nearest anti-air depots. With those gone, the rest of the Seventh Regiment would land, along with the Ottmyn artillery, and the conquest of the city could begin. She hoped that Siti wasn't in the assault group - assaults with explosives against fortified positions wasn't the best place to be in terms of survival.

The enemy attacked once, but they were driven off without losses - the accurate fire of the Albyonian troops kept them at bay, and the heavy guns of the Ottmyns did not need to fire once; their positions stayed hidden. A section from the Sixty-Second returned, bloodied and battered - they left their stock of explosives, and trudged wearily back behind the lines.

An explosion lit the horizon as the monolithic form of a turbolaser emplacement folded in on itself, gutted by a chain of blasts. The reactor breached, and a second detonation seared itself into Akwete's retinas.

More emplacements still studded the horizon. Squinting, she thought she could see lasfire flashing on the roof of one of them.

Her suspicions - that that one was being attacked - were confirmed when, ten minutes later, a set of synchronised explosions lifted its turret a metre into the air and sent it crashing back down through the superstructure.

A set of blasts began to trace a line: mortar fire, hunting the saboteurs. The shelling got closer...closer...closer…

A handful of black-clad figures rounded the corner, a mortar shell sprayed chips of plascrete across the rubble, and enemies poured through the street screaming their throats raw as they raced to close with the Imperials.

There was no time or need to pick targets: point and shoot, fire at will. Slivers of reddish light bowled the front ranks over, knocking them back into the legs of their comrades behind: the third ones in line leapt over. The saboteurs - four of them, out of what had probably been a section of twelve - kept running. One of them lost her footing and fell, her panicked yells swallowed up by the tide. The enemy was beginning to come within range of their own weapons, and a vicious fusillade boiled up at the Imperial position. It was inaccurate, but there was so much of it that it scarcely mattered: that many shots were bound to get lucky. Trooper Okadigbo went down to a headshot, searing through her helmet and burning into her forehead. Then the Ottmyn guns were in range, and the Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts' elite assault troopers earned every bit of their considerable reputation.

Ten crackling streams of energy struck the enemy as one, the troopers discharging their weapons all at once in a crackling orgy of destruction. The heretics simply burst, coming apart like rotten fruit struck by a falling brick, obliterated, atomised by the fury of the ancient technology. The barrage was over all too soon - the Ottmyn guns demanded much more than any charge cell could provide - but in that short time the enemy had lost a third of their number. While they reeled, the Albyonian troopers swung out of cover, firing rapidly into the mass. Their rifles snapped and cracked out a wild fusillade, mowing down still more. The enemy - though they did not look it, they had fanatical discipline - recovered from even this, and pressed their assault; there was barely time for Akwete to roar out 'Fix Bayonets' and wrestle her own into the lug, and then her world narrowed to a direct line between her, her bayonet, and the enemy.


	2. Bayonets and Coffee

Akwete

The first one vaulted her barricade only to catch fourteen inches of heavily blued steel in the solar plexus. The blade slid upwards into his heart, and Akwete moved with him; using his momentum to throw him backwards over her head and slide him off the blade, all in one smooth motion. As she pulled the weapon back, the moving rifle-butt caught the next one round the face: there was a splintering crack and he fell back, being brushed aside by the third: a great brute with a crude mace. He swung it overhand at her, but at the last minute changed direction to avoid her block.

Her bayonet, already in motion through a perfect riposte, opened his throat; his mace slammed into her leg. She felt skin tear and bone fracture and her leg suddenly stopped taking her weight. The brute fell beside her, head resting on her legs and blood dripping into the seams. She felt at peace, somewhat - three enemy dead by her hand, and more by her gun, was a worthy last act.

She would much rather have lived, though; lived and maybe started a farm. Siti had been nice - they could have been neighbours. She could almost see her now, kneeling over her, firing her lasrifle to drive off the last few enemies, a guardian angel…

There was the strange, discordant sound of an arc gun, and the sting of a needle, and Akwete's world went dark.

When she woke, everything was grey, which she supposed was an improvement. Her ears were buzzing, and her leg was numb, and her mind was swallowed up in valley-mist. She could feel herself floating on clouds of morphine.

Slowly, carefully, she reached up and found the morphine handle. She turned her head, ever so slowly, and saw that clockwise was more. Very slowly, she turned it counterclockwise. As the drugs began to pass out of her system, more and more of her perception returned. She was in a bed, with a thick blanket and sheets, and an IV drip pumping the drugs into her.

She turned the dial a little further counterclockwise, and pain began to return: hunger, bruising, and a horrible sense of emptiness where the mace had struck her. She lifted the sheets up slowly, and grunted in pain as the cold air bit into her wound; she took a look.

An entire segment of skin had been removed, and then replaced: stitching surrounded a patch of tissue bigger than her hand, and then there was the bizarre sense of nothingness underneath it. She could feel the pressure of something hard and cold beneath the skin. She pressed on it, expecting pain, but there was just absolute unyielding resistance: not even the softness of subcutaneous fat.

Taking her mind away from the hip for a moment, she looked around the room. The rest of the beds were filled with augmetic surgery patients: limbs and eyes gleamed with chrome. That probably explained the scarring and hardness - they'd had to replace her hip. She looked further round; there were more beds, some of them empty, some of them full, and then there were a few sofas.

Siti was asleep on one of them. Her eyelashes were stuck together with sleep-dust, and her mouth hung slightly open. She had clearly been waiting a while - her jacket was slung over the back of the chair, still coated in dust and sweat, and her beret sat perched beside it. Two empty coffee cups had been knocked over by an arm draped on the floor; it had slipped out of her sleeping bag. Akwete - slowly, carefully, and trying not to put weight on her injured leg - levered herself up and began to work her way over to the girl. She looped her arm round the IV drip and took it with her. About halfway there, she changed her mind and headed for the door.

Private Siti Imari

Siti woke to the smell of hot coffee. Akwete was sat on a battered old armchair by the sofa, holding a cup; she offered it. Siti began to get up. "I'll get my own, it's no -" Akwete shook her head.

"Can't have it. Drugs. It's good stuff, I got it from some Ottmyns on patrol." She extended her arm; Siti propped herself up and hesitantly accepted the drink. She took a sip, and felt a happy little grin spreading across her face. "Good?" Siti nodded quickly, and took another sip. Akwete, infected with the grin, said that Ottmyns always had the best coffee rations. Something about it being religiously significant and the Emperor not allowing them alcohol. There was a brief moment's silence, then Akwete spoke. "So, you were in the sabotage team." Siti placed her coffee, carefully, on the table.

"They drilled us all on explosives, remember? I think it was done by lottery."

"Probably. Are you alright? Your whole section…" Siti felt a pang of loss.

"Sergeant Chike told us that we were her rearguard. None of us questioned why she was leaving the rookies as a rearguard, we should have -" Her voice cracked. "She knew that she wouldn't be coming back. She knew it, and she wanted to make it count, and she -" She suddenly found herself supported by a pair of arms. She pressed her head into Akwete's shoulder and started to cry.

"She wanted to save as many of her section as she could. She chose the rookies, because she knew that taking her veterans would give her the best chance of success." Siti kept crying, but she nodded and mumbled something in the affirmative. "She was brave. I knew her." Siti pulled herself up a bit.

"She was brave," she affirmed.


	3. Full Story

Corporal Akwete Ademola

Three Battalion of the Seventh Albyonian made planetfall at midday, the cargo hold of the converted grain hauler packed with near enough 1,000 women. Elements from the Ninth Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts and Sixty-Second Albyonian had secured the spaceport earlier that day, and now it was time for the Light Foot of the Seventh to reinforce them. The spaceport was secure, but the enemy knew what they were doing when it came to fortifying a world and the anti-air emplacements were elsewhere.

There was something of a sense of fatalism in the hold; there always was on these drops. At any moment, a lucky stream of high-energy lasfire could punch through the hold and obliterate half a company, or an air-to-air missile from one of the planet's many heavy zeppelins could elude their aging point defense, or the systems could just crap out and drop the whole lot of them like hot coals.

Hence, the fatalism. It was hard to shake.

Akwete Ademola looked over at the person next to her. The poor girl was shaking, praying to a little amulet she held in clasped hands. Akwete frowned. "You. Amulet. Name?" The trooper gave a start.

"Uh, Imari. Private Imari."

"Your first name is Private?"

"N-no Corporal. Siti Imari."

"Siti. That's a nice name."

"Th-thank you, Corporal."

"Siti, where is your rifle?" Siti fished out a freshly-stamped lasrifle from the luggage rack. "Keep it with you. If the ship goes down, and you somehow survive, the last thing you want is to be fishing around for your weapon. If you're feeling nervous, check it. Knowing your equipment is in order makes you feel a bit better." Siti nodded and began to check the weapon with nervous hands. "And tuck the amulet away in a pocket. It's shiny, it'll give away your position."

The hauler made it - barely - to the ground. An airbursting shell had buckled the whole left side in, and the engines were venting hot gas from a dozen new holes after a close pass from a fighter, but they were alive. Squads spread out into the spaceport complex, moving to pre-assigned locations with absolute precision. The smell of cordite and heated ozone was thick in the air. Sweat and engine oil were close behind, followed by the oppressive heat - that had a smell all of its own, and a taste. Akwete had spent most of the drop walking Siti through recalibrating a rifle's focusing lens, and then they had moved on to small talk and a little strong coffee from a hip flask. Siti was from one of the larger islands in the archipelago surrounding the Byzantic desert, while Akwete came from a long line of farmers in a rural community on Albyon itself. They both liked music and crime novellas. Siti was in her platoon, but not her section. Akwete was a career soldier, but Siti had been conscripted; she hoped to one day settle on a conquered world and start a little farm. Akwete thought that sounded nice.

Akwete's section moved up through the rubble to a position held by a group of Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts, dressed in the distinctive, archaic carapace armour of that particular regiment and armed with the equally distinctive heavy arc guns. Akwete and the Janissary in command exchanged that long, brusque stare which NCOs have, concluded by a passive-aggressive nod which said 'okay, you're not going to be a liability'. Then Akwete put her troops front and centre while the Janissary put his men up on the rubble behind them.

It was going to be a long day.

The plan - from what Akwete had been able to figure out - was for some of Three Battalion to reinforce the spaceport while other elements moved to eliminate the nearest anti-air depots. With those gone, the rest of the Seventh Regiment would land, along with the Ottmyn artillery, and the conquest of the city could begin. She hoped that Siti wasn't in the assault group - assaults with explosives against fortified positions wasn't the best place to be in terms of survival.

The enemy attacked once, but they were driven off without losses - the accurate fire of the Albyonian troops kept them at bay, and the heavy guns of the Ottmyns did not need to fire once; their positions stayed hidden. A section from the Sixty-Second returned, bloodied and battered - they left their stock of explosives, and trudged wearily back behind the lines.

An explosion lit the horizon as the monolithic form of a turbolaser emplacement folded in on itself, gutted by a chain of blasts. The reactor breached, and a second detonation seared itself into Akwete's retinas.

More emplacements still studded the horizon. Squinting, she thought she could see lasfire flashing on the roof of one of them.

Her suspicions - that that one was being attacked - were confirmed when, ten minutes later, a set of synchronised explosions lifted its turret a metre into the air and sent it crashing back down through the superstructure.

A set of blasts began to trace a line: mortar fire, hunting the saboteurs. The shelling got closer...closer...closer…

A handful of black-clad figures rounded the corner, a mortar shell's burst sprayed chips of plascrete across the rubble, and enemies poured through the street screaming their throats raw as they raced to close with the Imperials.

There was no time or need to pick targets: point and shoot, fire at will. Slivers of reddish light bowled the front ranks over, knocking them back into the legs of their comrades behind: the third ones in line leapt over. The saboteurs - four of them, out of what had probably been a section of twelve - kept running. One of them lost her footing and fell, her panicked yells swallowed up by the tide. The enemy was beginning to come within range of their own weapons, and a vicious fusillade boiled up at the Imperial position. It was inaccurate, but there was so much of it that it scarcely mattered: that many shots were bound to get lucky. Trooper Okadigbo went down to a headshot, searing through her helmet and burning into her forehead. Then the Ottmyn guns were in range, and the Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts' elite assault troopers earned every bit of their considerable reputation.

Ten crackling streams of energy struck the enemy as one, the troopers discharging their weapons all at once in a crackling orgy of destruction. The heretics simply burst, coming apart like rotten fruit struck by a falling brick, obliterated, atomised by the fury of the ancient technology. The barrage was over all too soon - the Ottmyn guns demanded much more than any charge cell could provide - but in that short time the enemy had lost a third of their number. While they reeled, the Albyonian troopers swung out of cover, firing rapidly into the mass. Their rifles snapped and cracked out a wild fusillade, mowing down still more. The enemy - though they did not look it, they had fanatical discipline - recovered from even this, and pressed their assault; there was barely time for Akwete to roar out 'Fix Bayonets' and wrestle her own into the lug, and then her world narrowed to a direct line between her, her bayonet, and the enemy.

The first one vaulted her barricade only to catch fourteen inches of blued steel in the solar plexus. The blade slid upwards into his heart, and Akwete moved with him, using his momentum to throw him backwards over her head and slide him off the blade, all in one smooth motion. As she pulled the weapon back, the moving rifle-butt caught the next one round the face: there was a splintering crack and he fell back, being brushed aside by the third: a great brute with a crude mace. He swung it overhand at her, but at the last minute changed direction to avoid her block.

Her bayonet, already in motion through a perfect riposte, opened his throat; his mace slammed into her leg. She felt skin tear and bone fracture and her leg suddenly stopped taking her weight. The brute fell beside her, head resting on her legs and blood dripping into the seams. She felt at peace, somewhat - three enemy dead by her hand, and more by her gun, was a worthy last act.

She would much rather have lived, though; lived and maybe started a farm. Siti had been nice - they could have been neighbours. She could almost see her now, kneeling over her, firing her lasrifle to drive off the last few enemies, a guardian angel…

There was the strange, discordant sound of an arc gun, and the sting of a needle, and Akwete's world went dark.

When she woke, everything was grey, which she supposed was an improvement. Her ears were buzzing, and her leg was numb, and her mind was swallowed up in valley-mist. She could feel herself floating on clouds of morphine.

Slowly, carefully, she reached up and found the morphine handle. She turned her head, ever so slowly, and saw that clockwise was more. Very slowly, she turned it counterclockwise. As the drugs began to pass out of her system, more and more of her perception returned. She was in a bed, with a thick blanket and sheets, and an IV drip pumping the drugs into her.

She turned the dial a little further counterclockwise, and pain began to return: hunger, bruising, and a horrible sense of emptiness where the mace had struck her. She lifted the sheets up slowly, and grunted in pain as the cold air bit into her wound; she took a look.

An entire segment of skin had been removed, and then replaced: stitching surrounded a patch of tissue bigger than her hand, and then there was the bizarre sense of nothingness underneath it. She could feel the pressure of something hard and cold beneath the skin. She pressed on it, expecting pain, but there was just absolute unyielding resistance: not even the softness of subcutaneous fat.

Taking her mind away from the hip for a moment, she looked around the room. The rest of the beds were filled with augmetic surgery patients: limbs and eyes gleamed with chrome. That probably explained the scarring and hardness - they'd had to replace her hip. She looked further round; there were more beds, some of them empty, some of them full, and then there were a few sofas.

Siti was asleep on one of them. Her eyelashes were stuck together with sleep-dust, and her mouth hung slightly open. She had clearly been waiting a while - her jacket was slung over the back of the chair, still coated in dust and sweat, and her beret sat perched beside it. Two empty coffee cups had been knocked over by an arm draped on the floor; it had slipped out of her sleeping bag. Akwete - slowly, carefully, and trying not to put weight on her injured leg - levered herself up and began to work her way over to the girl. She looped her arm round the IV drip and took it with her. About halfway there, she changed her mind and headed for the door.

Private Siti Imari

Siti woke to the smell of hot coffee. Akwete was sat on a battered old armchair by the sofa, holding a cup; she offered it. Siti began to get up. "I'll get my own, it's no -" Akwete shook her head.

"Can't have it. Drugs. It's good stuff, I got it from some Ottmyns on patrol." She extended her arm; Siti propped herself up and hesitantly accepted the drink. She took a sip, and felt a happy little grin spreading across her face. "Good?" Siti nodded quickly, and took another sip. Akwete, infected with the grin, said that Ottmyns always had the best coffee rations. Something about it being religiously significant and the Emperor not allowing them alcohol. There was a brief moment's silence, then Akwete spoke. "So, you were in the sabotage team." Siti placed her coffee, carefully, on the table.

"They drilled us all on explosives, remember? I think it was done by lottery."

"Probably. Are you alright? Your whole section…" Siti felt a pang of loss.

"Sergeant Chike told us that we were her rearguard. None of us questioned why she was leaving the rookies as a rearguard, we should have -" Her voice cracked. "She knew that she wouldn't be coming back. She knew it, and she wanted to make it count, and she -" She suddenly found herself supported by a pair of arms. She pressed her head into Akwete's shoulder and started to cry.

"She wanted to save as many of her section as she could. She chose the rookies, because she knew that taking her veterans would give her the best chance of success." Siti kept crying, but she nodded and mumbled something in the affirmative. "She was brave. I knew her." Siti pulled herself up a bit.

"She was brave," she affirmed.

The Janissary

The Janissary had, sometime before his training, had a name. His name had been something which people referred to him by, similar to the function his cogonomen had now. He did not miss his name; it had been linked to blasphemies against the Emperor, given to him by heretics and sinners. He liked his cogonomen: it was simple, sacred, and easy to say. He was Tawhid 037, in command of Squad Tawhid 037. The other members of the squad were less important - they were not Janissaries, they still had their sinful names of birth. If they died, the squad continued, but if he died, the squad was dissolved.

Division Command was issuing new gear: hotshot lasguns, instead of heavy arc guns. The big guns were deemed too slow to reload and recharge for the close work which the Ottmyns were having to perform, but comparable firepower was now being provided by barrel-mounted arc dischargers: a shorter burst, and some would argue less damaging, but the tradeoff was that the whole squad could continue to contribute to a firefight even after firing their signature arc volley. The new guns had been landed alongside the Ottmyn's heavy equipment: Medusae, Hydras, Colossi, and the crown jewel of the Ninth Sky Cataphracts' artillery, the Dominus Armoured Bombard Djinn-Fire. Techpriests skittered around the vast frame of the symbol of Imperial might, blessing and anointing, stacking shells in sacred geometric patterns.

Were I not a Janissary, thought he, I would gladly be a Techpriest. He always felt a sense of religious awe around the instruments of the Emperor in the Machine, an inferiority in the face of their power. Squads of Skitarii - the soldiers of the Machine, assigned to guard such holy works as the Dominus - stood in perfect order around the landing strip. Arcane weapons not dissimilar to his own were clasped in mechanical hands. He turned and left, to gather his squad for the assault proper into the city. With artillery such as this behind them, how could they fail?

Akwete

Siti had been assigned to her section, to replace Okadigbo for the push into the city. The Seventh and Sixty-Second would form the first wave of the assault, with the Seventh acting as scouts to locate and lock down enemy positions.

The Sky Cataphracts would form platoon-strength assault teams, providing overwhelming force against crucial points of the enemy's thrown-together defensive line. Weapons were checked, bayonets fixed for the fight, and Three Battalion mobilised themselves. The Ottmyn artillery and new weapons had taken precedence over more manpower, but Eight Battalion had deployed and would be joining them as a further reconnaissance force. The fatalism of the drop was still strong on the newcomers, but combat would soon cure them of it; all of Three Battalion was now solid and good to move at a moment's notice.

They met little resistance for the first few blocks, but then there was a problem: the enemy had begun to mutilate their own city, blasting apart the hab-blocks to clear lines of fire and create killzones. Volleys of solid shot and superheated particles boiled around the section, tearing chunks from the ferrocrete blocks and whipping tiny chips of rubble into a blinding, murderous frenzy. Drilled responses kicked in, each trooper snapping off two shots as they ran for cover and dropped flat into the broken ground. The enemy fire kept coming, but it could not touch them and eventually stopped. Akwete pressed a button on her combead, and reached the heavy mortar carriages supporting them.

"Requesting fragmentation shells," she voxed, "Start point my position, addition one hundred metres easterly. Trail easterly fifty metres. Confirm."

"Confirmed," hissed the priest on the other end, "Zero shell fired. Confirm splash." Less than half a minute later, the first shell smashed into the enemy defense line, scattering figures across the landscape.

"Splash confirmed, continue firing."

"Confirmed, fire support proper commencing." Barely half a minute later, heavy shells began thumping into the enemy line, not one falling short, the accuracy of the Techpriests' instruments and their attentive calibration of the guns paying off in brutal fashion. As the bombardment moved off to the east, Akwete was already up and moving. Ill-aimed lasfire snapped around her, burning corners off rubble blocks, and then she leapt over a patch of barbed wire and was in amongst them. She spitted one through the neck, fended off a bayonet thrust, fired a double-tap, slammed someone in the gut with the butt of her rifle, broke a neck with a blow to the base of the skull. Her section were in just behind her, overrunning the enemy, beating and kicking with heavy boots, stabbing with bayonets and knives. The enemy tried to run, tried to hide, but none escaped. Akwete spoke into her combead; "Cease bombardment." The bombardment stopped, the immediate burst of explosives replaced by the far-off storm of gunfire. "Get this place locked down." Then, into her combead, reaching the platoon from the 62nd supporting them; "Move up, we are clear. Stay on this channel." A squad of hostiles gathered at the end of the alleyway, spitting the strange oaths that they had; the linguists said that the oaths weren't indigenous to this world, but that didn't really matter to the soldiers on the ground: it was the sort of fact which officers bandied about to lend their memoirs a sense of perspective.

Speaking of officers… "Lieutenant Foster, be advised: enemy massing at rifle range of rally point."

"Understood, Corporal. Thanks." Foster was a good sort.

The platoon arrived within five minutes, and immediately began setting up: six mortars were deployed to provide cover for the advance, and one infantry section prepared for defensive duties. A pair of troopers hurried past with a Browning support gun, and she pointed them to a good spot. The thunder of gunfire continued on the horizon; the advance was staying still, and now was the point of greatest risk: if they lost momentum now, the enemy would fortify more heavily and any hope of a swift advance would be lost. Woven into the mix of weaponry on the wind came an ever-greater intensity of arc discharge, as the Ottmyn reserve joined the fight in an attempt to continue the push. Foster approached, and they began to formulate the next stage of their advance. Beyond the defenses, the enemy - not dissuaded by the occasional killshots made by Akwete's section - continued to gather.

Alpha-Lima Niner Niner

Alpha Lima Niner Niner was the Techpriest in charge of Skitarii maniple Alpha-Lima: there were 01100010 Skitarii and 00000001 other priests under his command, for a total of 01100100 units in the maniple. He moved his units with bursts of encrypted binaric war-cant, protecting the machines - his machines - with ruthless, maternal efficiency.

The convoy of Medusa artillery vehicles was moving up through the rubble to crack a particularly stubborn defensive position, and the Skitarii under Alpha-Lima Niner Niner were deployed to protect them. Forty Rangers had the front and rear, moving through through the rubble in skirmish order, while another forty Vanguard had the flanks, clearing buildings alongside and ahead of the convoy. Alpha-Lima One Oh Oh was beside him in the command centre, micromanaging the Ironstriders and Sicarians; elite units at risk of encountering the enemy first, requiring constant supervision.

A great many things happened, more or less all at once; the time between them could be measured in milliseconds. Alpha-Lima Niner Niner's perception of time was twisted and stretched by emergency release of synthetic hormones, overclocking of the processors, and he felt each thing happening as if it were an eon.

First came a small push, possibly a desperate attempt to crack the network by an enemy vox-warfare unit. He repelled it with minimal effort, and then - the less than obvious feint having drawn his attention - he was struck with the digital equivalent of a vortex weapon. Within three milliseconds, his hastily erected defenses had been overrun and the enemy had struck into his heartland.

Within another two milliseconds, all that was left of Alpha-Lima Niner Niner's mind was a grimy, scummy puddle of minor logical processes. From out of this morass rose a strange thing, neither male nor female, neither red nor purple, yet all of the above and more. It looked across a trail of binaric communication to Alpha-Lima One Oh Oh, and smiled as something similar to it approached. They shared a brief, passionate embrace, and sat in the middle of their two victims' minds as the same set of processes repeated across the network. Within milliseconds, nothing was left of any of the Techpriests on the planet.

Colonel Bayezid

Colonel Bayezid wondered what it would take for his guards to shoot him in the head.

The Ottmyn organization of Regiments was a strange one; the Officers were in charge, technically, but it was the Janissaries - the Non Commissioned Officers - who held the true power. He told them where to go, but if they thought it was wrong they would assume command. He shuddered. It was like being surrounded by commissars. He breathed in, breathed out, and handed one of them an order slip. The man took it, bowed, and exited at a reasonable pace.

There was a faint thud, like something punching through canvas; he turned around.

The other Janissary was gone in a bloody swath between the neck and the waist. His head rolled somewhere away, while his legs had the discipline to fall at attention.

Time slowed, congealed. Colonel Bayezid had time to see the round coming, open a tear in the canvas, he felt his body moving, he heard the sound, and the depleted-uranium slug punched through the wall behind him.

By the time the round had licked up a spray of ferrocrete chips from the ground outside, Colonel Bayezid was dead along with every officer in the spaceport. The three hundred enlisted - more numerous, but now leaderless - were systematically culled over the next seven point one minutes.

Siti

Siti thought about her position, considered lines of sight as she had been taught to, and sighted down her rifle at the enemy. Akwete and Lieutenant Foster were planning the next move. She turned to look at them.

Akwete was shouting something. She was spattered with something red...strange, Siti could have sworn that she hadn't been like that before...Foster was nowhere to be seen. It wasn't until what was left of Foster fell at Akwete's feet, and she threw herself flat, roaring to find cover, that Siti realised they were under fire.

Siti survived by chance: there was a block of ferrocrete behind her which kept her out of the line of fire. Watts died two feet away as a round punched straight through her, entering at the right buttock and leaving through the top of her head in a spray of gore.

Kinetic rounds, thought the part of Siti's brain which wasn't hysterical, from behind.

Akwete

Akwete was a woman of many parts: the caring friend had been helping Siti on the dropship. The insane, instinct-driven warrior had broken the enemy lines a few minutes ago.

The third part - the NCO, the leader - was now trying to keep them all alive. The enemy was firing advanced weaponry from behind them, had caught them off-guard. How had they got behind them? Had the whole offensive collapsed? Were they now surrounded, alone on a planet lost to the enemy?

She minimised that set of thoughts, and by the time she was in cover she had the first part of a plan. In the interest of keeping her squad and the soldiers from the 62nd in the loop, she bellowed this part of the plan at the top of her lungs.

Siti

"One eighty degrees, fifty metres, enemy! Rapid fire!" The fire control order echoed across the battlefield, and the soldiers obeyed. Lasfire flashed across the ground they had covered to take the position, trying to make the enemy pay their share of blood. Siti counted out her five shots and worked the bolt, ejecting the used cell and sliding another into place with the same spring-loaded motion. Somewhere nearby, a surviving mortar operator thumped out a shell at the enemy. The burst made him a target and half a dozen rounds tore him apart with pinpoint accuracy; the shell was already in motion. One of the hazy, indistinct figures downrange vanished, blown apart by a direct hit; Siti grinned with vengeful satisfaction. Another one had been blown out of cover by the explosion, but it rolled away before she could draw a bead.

Akwete

The next part of Akwete's plan dropped into place. She roared at the two troopers nearest to her to cover the enemy massing at the end of the street, and while they were doing that she pointed angrily at one of their krak grenades until it was handed over. She leopard-crawled through the firefight, krak grenade clasped in one hand, lasrifle in the other, until she reached what she was looking for. A wall.

They had been advancing through a slum, and that meant the buildings were unsound. A krak grenade would punch straight through the wall, but - this was the problem - it might cause a collapse and send the towering heaps of hab blocks crashing onto them.

Behind her, the enemy fire found a Private from the 62nd, taking half his face away and spinning him onto a tangle of barbed wire where he hung, screaming. The decision was made.

Siti

"Grab the Brownings! Move to the walls on the left! Prepare to retreat!" Akwete's voice was still going, and her orders were obeyed. Siti snapped off a shot and dropped behind cover, high-velocity rounds scattering off the rubble like frightened hornets. She worked the bolt again, worked a clip of cells into the mechanism, and looked around: no Brownings. There was, however, an air-cooled heavy stubber, knocked over by the artillery bombardment. She rolled to it, flipped it upright, checked the belt, and - with no small degree of trepidation - pulled the trigger.

The effect was immediate and gratifying; a lot of metal came out of the far end of the weapon. Down the sights she could see the enemy diving for cover, reacting to the new stream of munitions flying downrange. She twisted, catching a figure and sawing it in half. The weapon's barrel glowed first cherry red, then white, the cheap aluminium shroud slowly melting inwards.

Emperor, these people knew nothing about weapons. The gun seized up and bucked in her hands as it jammed, and she rolled back into cover. The fire picked back up - she had brought them a few seconds' incomplete respite, at best.

Akwete

The wall burst inwards, and Akwete had a brief moment of absolute terror - I've got it wrong, this is a load-bearing wall, I just killed us all. Where's Siti? Siti was crawling towards her with a wounded Private in tow. Solid shot whup-whupped through the air around her, and the Private was struck once - twice - he was dead. Siti kept dragging his corpse, not realising or not wanting to realise. Akwete, possessed by some madness, began to move: she snatched one of the support guns from a trooper and began spraying bursts downrange at the enemy, roaring for Siti to run, run! "Siti, GO!" Finally, her heart soared as Siti left the dead body in the open and started to crawl faster. Faster, faster, faster...a round punched across the woman's back, opening a flesh wound, but she kept going, and then a burst of plasma liquidised the ground just half a metre from her, and something whipped Siti's hair into a frenzy, and then she was there, and Akwete was grabbing her and dragging her through the wall, still firing the weapon one-handed, and then they were through, out of the line of fire, and someone yelled at them to keep moving, further into the bowels of the hive-slums, and a grenade went off behind them, collapsing the ceiling behind them, sealing them off from the desperate sounds of an unlucky few holding out to the last.

Someone - Akwete wasn't sure who - started to cry. It wasn't until the tears started to seep through her uniform jacket that she realised it was Siti.

They sat and stood there in the dark for some time, some crying, some falling to the ground to do so while others stood. Eventually, Siti pulled her head up off Akwete's shoulder, and looked around. "What happened," she whispered thickly, "what happened?"

"We got hit by fire from behind."

"They had robes on. Blue-grey sort of robes, and glowing eyes. Their weapons looked like antiques." Her voice was still choked with weary, adrenaline-buzzed anguish, but it was receding. "They had plasma, didn't they? But it only opened up near the end."

"So it was short-ranged."

"And there was no automatic fire or wild shots, so…"

"Marksmen. Good marksmen, and a small team of plasma gunners moving in close."

"The secessionists...they weren't marksmen. They had solid-shot, but it was all rapid fire stuff." Akwete nodded, slowly.

"So this is something new."

"A force which knew where we were going to be."

"A force which we wouldn't have been warned about."

"Friendlies."

"Friendlies with robes."

Siti put two and two together a little quicker. "The Skitarii. The rest of the battalion...the Ottmyns... we've got to warn them!"

"It's too late," said the Janissary.

Siti

Siti turned. It was an Ottmyn, armed with a heavy lasgun and followed by three others. "Sniper fire killed all officers to my knowledge. The spaceport, artillery, and surface-to-air defences are all held by the enemy. In the absence of unified command, it falls to us to deny any important information we may possess to the enemy. Blessed is His Name, current date unknown."

Siti was a quick thinker, but it wasn't until the barrel of the lasgun was at the Ottmyn's mouth that she realised what he meant.

Fortunately for the man, Akwete was quicker; she was moving on a timeframe based around fractions of seconds, and she had the lasgun slapped away from him before Siti - unbalanced by her sudden movement - had steadied herself. She gripped him by the hardened ceramic frontplate of his armour. "I am assuming command!" It came out rushed, but he heard it loud and clear. "I am assuming command." Something changed in his eyes.

"Tawhid 037, with members of consolidated squad Tawhid 037. Total four men at your command, Corporal…"

"Ademola."

"Corporal Ademola. Your orders?"

Gen-Unit Omegis Oh One

_Sniff-sniff track-hunt kill-slay the man-things._

The cogitator guiding the gen-crafted creature was not a complicated one: it was disposable, more of a set of blinders than any sort of bridle or tackle, designed to point the beast in the right direction.

A set of proud whiskers touched the rubble of the collapsed hive-slum, and the beast started to dig with claws like punch-daggers. _Man-things. Man-things. Track-hunt, hide-sneak-pounce-jump. Kill-slay._

Siti

Tawhid and Akwete sat in the middle of the room, disassembling weapons and planning. The simple, mechanical actions seemed to calm them, focus them - Siti supposed that it was the sort of thing which professional soldiers did. The pair of them seemed to have that 'thing' which the recruiters all talked about: the right stuff.

Siti wasn't sure she had that.

Akwete examined Tawhid's focusing matrix, and he did the same to hers - both seemed satisfied. He was working on his laspistol - her on her rifle. His longarm was propped up against the wall: such arcane technology was too risky to disassemble.

Akwete

With Tawhid's squad added to their number, the little platoon consisted of thirty; all were combat effective, since those too wounded to move hadn't made it out of the street. They had weapons, but no rations and a serious lack of ammunition - the Ottmyns had less than a minute of sustained fire in their cells, and the rifles were down to about two reloads' worth of cells each. They had no explosives, a handful of Brownings with half-drained ammunition batteries, and sidearms whose ammunition had been removed and used to supplement the rifles'. Tawhid finished snapping his sidearm back together: the Ottmyns' laspistols still had ammunition, mostly because the cells weren't compatible with any of the other weapons on hand. She fitted the bolt assembly back into the top of the rifle, and checked her sights. Perfect. She turned to Tawhid, and held the weapon out in both hands. "MNLE-78 bolt-action short lasrifle. Get used to the feel of it. If we start going down - and we will - you might have to use our weapons." He held it tenderly at first, but then brought it up into a firing position. "Down," he muttered, and she did so immediately.

Gen-Unit Omegis Oh One

_Kill-slay. Found. Kill-slay-pounce-rip-tear._

The beast saw them swapping weapons around like baubles, and chems driven into its cerebral tissue by centimetre-thick probes made it enraged by this. It lunged first for the armed man.

The Janissary

Tawhid had very little time to react before the thing he had seen in the shadows - the beast - moved. Corporal Ademola was on the floor in front of him, restricting movement, and backing up would result in the thing turning on her.

He fired.

The lance of energy sliced across the creature's back, skimming close enough to singe mangy fur and blister corrupted skin, but not to kill it. He didn't have time for another shot, because it was on him: he jabbed with the rifle barrel, striking the creature in the jaw. It rolled away, teeth spilling from its ruined mouth, and people started to react. Someone tried to bring their rifle to bear, but it was too fast; lasfire heated the ground behind it as it rushed back towards him. Ademola was moving rolling away, and he could now move without exposing her: he threw himself to the side.

Claws scraped across his armoured pauldron, leaving deep gouges in the ceramic.

A blade thrust upwards, punching through the belly of the beast and out of its back. The acrid stench of corruption filled the room as the life leaked out of it, flowing down the sword bayonet.

Corporal Ademola stood, and used the sole of her boot to push the thing - which appeared to be some sort of large rat - off the blade. "They didn't fuse its ribs together," she said. "My mob, Ottmyns, secure the perimeter! 62nd, get the kit packed. We're moving." She turned to Tawhid. "Good fighting." Then she stamped on the rat-thing's neck until it broke, and took her rifle back from the Janissary.

Captain Cai Mkinnon

The Lunar-Class cruiser Lord Executor drifted through the void above the world known as Bounteous Harvest; the little religious colony which had grown into the sector's agricultural capital. Most of it was just grassland, with a few mountains where plates had collided and a large ocean providing convenient water sources for the farmers. The spaceport and surrounding city, situated on the only non-mainland landmass on the planet, was the only truly urban environment on the whole planet, and the only place with any major PDF presence; that had been where the archenemy's corruption had begun. The city had fallen in a day, but the enemy had so far been unable to spread out and across the world due to the fact that the spaceport had been established on an island - all the sea Captains had left as soon as word of the uprising took place. A handful of other small towns had fallen to the massed PDF uprising, but the townsfolk had fought back and - remarkably - regained control. Only the spaceport and city were left to retake.

Mkinnon had been entirely in favour of levelling it with a lance strike: his parents had told him the whole story of what urban warfare did to the infantry involved. Even the best regiments were made almost equal to the enemy - any building could hold a platoon, any shadow could hide an anti-personnel mine, any doorway could conceal a madman with a cleaver. Casualties were always high, morale always low, and the supply situation was always disastrous.

And now they had lost contact with the entire assault force: a strike force of heavy infantry and artillery, a Mechanicum conclave, half a regiment of line infantry, and two battalions of light foot. Contact had disappeared instantaneously, and he was wondering how best to insert an 'I told you so' into the Lord General's morning dataslate.

Speaking of the Lord General...the supreme commander of the invasion, Erwin Lavandais, was on the bridge. Everything about him was sharp: sharp eyes, sharp tongue, sharply pressed uniform, and a sharp mind if rumour was to be believed. He turned to his second, a weasel of a man so wide in stature that he was unlikely to fit down any sort of burrow: Kamijo Koji. "Report, Kamijo."

"We lost contact with the assault force three hours ago, Lord General, with a complete communications blackout. Even the other settlements on the planet are out of signal. We have no information. Should I launch reconnaissance fighters?"

"Tell me what they recover, Kamijo. In future, I expect to receive reports rather than requests for orders. Captain Mkinnon, can our sensors tell us anything over this range?"

"Not accurately, sir. However, we can track the fighters if we have their IFF tags." Lavandais nodded.

"I am placing the reconnaissance flight in your hands. Kamijo, give me an accurate and up-to-date report of the combat strength we currently have aboard this vessel: if something has gone wrong down there, I want us at full readiness to respond with reinforcements." Kamijo nodded sharply, and exited. "I believe I have offended him by giving you command of the reconnaissance flight, Captain. He may bear a grudge." Mkinnon nodded.

"Possibly, sir."

"You are Captain of this vessel. If he decides to act on said grudge in any way, tell him you have my full authorisation to put him in the brig."

"Yes, sir." Mkinnon turned to his fighter commander. "DuFresne, select a wing of Thunderbolts loaded for air to air, and link their IFF tags to the bridge screen. Get me a feed from the pilot and hull cameras, build it up into a holographic display for later." DuFresne nodded, and within a minute the fifteen craft of 408 Squadron - The Dervishes - were visible as little green dots. The dots blipped as they moved at an appreciable multiple of the speed of sound out of the launch tubes, slammed into the atmosphere, and lost contact for four long minutes of plasma-blackout.

They came back forty-five miles above the surface of the planet, and there was another depressingly long wait for them to come into range for visual.

Dervish Seven let out a panicked yell, and his icon blinked out. Comms chatter came thick and fast after that - "Evade, evade," and "From the spaceport," and then Dervishes Three, Six, and Twelve blinked out in rapid succession. Red blips started appearing on the screen, and selecting one of them opened a rapidly-growing profile of size, shape, and combat capability. One of them closed to range with Dervish Four, and both blinked out - the profile changed to 'suicide craft', but when the enemy blip reappeared it flickered to 'flying monstrous creature'.

Another dot flew close by Dervish Leader, whose comm channel turned to 'fire, fire' and whose icon spun wildly out of control before disappearing. The profile reassembled itself to match the assessment a second before Mkinnon put it together. "Heldrakes! Heldrakes! 408 Squadron, disengage!" It was too late; the dots kept coming, though one blinked out when it strayed in front of Dervish Nine, and the rest of 408 Squadron's icons were removed from the display. With their sensors and datafeeds gone, the whole screen went black - the room, dimmed to allow the command staff to view it, was all of a sudden extremely quiet and extremely dark.

The emergency lights decided that this loss of light warranted a crisis, and activated. Phosphorescent strips indicated available exits, emergency oxygen packs, and repair tools. Mkinnon turned, slowly, to his second. "Please record the loss of 408 Squadron, with all members presumed Killed in Action. Sir, what is your assessment?" Lavandais looked pensive.

"The enemy has an unknown number of powerful war machines providing air superiority over the spaceport. 408 Squadron started taking casualties before they appeared, however, suggesting that the enemy has control over a large number of the air defenses, if not all of them. This suggests that the assault on the defenses failed, and that our forces are not in control of the city."

"Which means they are either dead or in hiding," added Mkinnon.

"Most likely. If they are in hiding, it is likely that casualties are catastrophic. The question - as my superiors will likely see it, at least - is whether enough of them are left to warrant a rescue operation, or whether we should cut our losses and obliterate the port from orbit."

Akwete

They lost two to a rat attack while they moved: both from the 62nd, ripped apart before anyone could react. One of the Sky Cataphracts wrestled the thing to the ground and tore its guts open with a chainblade.

They heard a number of explosions: one of Akwete's section, Private Greene, wrestled her way through a collapsed bit of tunnel to see what was going on outside. She reported a crashed Thunderbolt, with no signs of life; Akwete's mind jumped almost instantly to a radio, and she began gathering what was left of her section to move to it. Four others, including Siti; five valuable lives in total, which she would be putting at risk by going above ground and moving towards that wreck.

Akwete didn't know what to do.

Flight Officer Alejandro Fioretti

His leg hurt, quite a lot, as did the whole of his arm along the same side. His boot was filling with something warm, and his head was ringing.

He was alive.That was funny. _Maybe I should laugh_.

Akwete

Greene motioned Akwete and the Janissary up to the sewage grate she was watching out of. They both watched where she was pointing; a man in a singed naval uniform was staggering from the wreckage of the Thunderbolt. "Shit," muttered Akwete; the debate over whether or not to move out from cover had just been taken from a tactical one to a moral one.

"He's a dead man out there," muttered Greene, the lasburn along her right temple shifting around as she spoke, "But we might end up dead as well if we go after him." Akwete nodded. A rat skittered past her feet - a normal one, just a little thing trying to get by.

"Greene, hand me that rat and our longest piece of wire."

Fioretti

Having checked himself over, Fioretti decided that he wasn't going to die: a pleasant surprise, to say the least. He was parched, though, and upon searching the wreck of his Thunderbolt he found a little stash of teabags and a boiling vessel. He set about hauling the appliance out of the wreckage.

Akwete

"What's he doing, Greene?" There was a fair bit of noise coming from the wreckage, and Akwete couldn't see - she was rather focused on the task at hand.

"He's pulling something out of the wreck, Corporal."

"Is it a radio?"

"Can't quite tell. Right sort of size and shape. He's fiddling with it, may be trying to bring it online...wait, what's that? He's taking something out of it…" The smell of tea hit Akwete shortly after Greene's surprised assertion: "Corporal, he's making a bloody brew." Akwete frowned, and continued with her task. The rat squeaked, not quite sure what was going on.

They pushed the rat out of the hole, and Akwete poked it in the backside with her bayonet to send it running. "Come on," muttered Akwete, "Head for the tea."

Fioretti

Fioretti sipped his tea and smiled: life always seemed better with a good hot drink. Now, if only he had the radio, he could put on some music to go with it. Leaving his tea to cool, he returned to the wreck and began sifting through it, looking for the communications equipment - if memory served, the crash had propelled it some distance through the enginarium.

He returned two minutes later, hauling the radio, to find a rat sniffing around his teacup. Shifting the precious tea out of its reach, he swatted it away, only to see a wire trailing from it into some hole in the ground. He picked up the rat, positioned his left arm as though holding a copy of the Evening Vexilla, and headed over with an authoritative stride to converse with the locals about the value of keeping pets under control. "Excuse me," he said as he approached the hole, "I say!"

Akwete

"Excuse me," said the flight officer, "I say!" Siti, beside her, seemed agog at the whole affair. "Is this," he said, producing a squirming little bundle from behind his back, "Your rat? It's just it was rather disturbing my morning, as if that bloody dogfight and crash-landing hadn't done enough. I know that you are having a little difficulty with the war and all, but certain things are just common decency! Tell you what," he pulled out a little scrap of paper, "This is my certification as a pilot, so you needn't worry about the uniform: I'm harmless, and anyone who returns me to the nearest Imperial installation will be well rewarded. Here you go, young lady." He handed it to Siti, and she took it, inspected it, and handed it back.

"All perfectly in order, Flight Officer. Private Imari, Seventh Albyonian; we're out on something of a special mission that you seem to have stumbled on. Mind bringing us that radio over there?"

"Of course," he said, cheerily, "I say, what luck to stumble on some friendly soldiers! Salt of the earth, all of you." Akwete turned to look at Siti.

"We can try and fix his mind when we're back underground," said the Private, "Arguing out here might get us all killed."

By the time the pilot - Fioretti, his name was - had hauled his tea boiler and radio underground, night had begun to fall and the signs of fatigue were showing hard. Fear had kept them going so far, but now exhaustion was winning through. Most of their rations had been with the troops of the 62nd, and were now lost, as were many of their bivy bags and mats.

The jackets of the 7th were designed to be warm and easy to sleep in, so they gave the two bivy bags they had left to the Ottmyns. Akwete stripped down to her undershirt, draped the jacket over herself, and rested her head on a piece of rubble. Siti lay down beside her and did the same. Akwete could see a few tear tracks on Siti's face as, overwhelmed by the day, she began to cry; moisture dripped silently onto the floor.

Akwete reached over and clasped her hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze and smiling sadly. She whispered that it was okay, and that she would get them out of there alive.

Siti's hands were ice cold, and she shivered as she rocked back and forth. Akwete wriggled closer, and wrapped her arms under the girl's shoulders to pull her closer. She wrapped them up in both of their jackets and held on tight until the sun rose at seven twenty-four tomorrow. Siti was still asleep when Akwete woke up; her eyelashes were stuck together with sleep dust, and her mouth hung slightly open. The morning light was a little way from her face, so Akwete shaded her eyes to let her get a little more sleep.

Lance Corporal Lou Greene

Greene - who had the watch - looked over at the pair, all wrapped up in each other, and at Ademola covering Imari's eyes to let her sleep, and gave a knowing little grin. She had been in Akwete's section her whole career, and the Corporal had never once let her down. "Be good to the lass, Imari," she whispered, "She's been through a lot."

Siti

Siti woke up, and found herself wrapped up in two jackets rather than one. She felt warm, and safe, and comfortable...and she could smell coffee.

Akwete was in her undershirt and fatigue trousers, holding a cup of coffee in one calloused hand while she stirred a large tin of porridge with the other. Siti's belly rumbled, which went well with the tiny little flip-flops it was doing; she'd been - for lack of a better word - playing little spoon to her direct superior. That probably violated no-frats, or professional codes of conduct, or something.

Then again, she thought, we're likely to all wind up dead before that starts to be a problem. Besides, she was just trying to keep me warm. She started to get up, putting any concerns about Akwete's intentions on the back burner as she ladled herself a bowl of porridge.

The Janissary

Watching Corporal Ademola planning was something of a spiritual experience for Tawhid - it sounded strange when put that way, but it was true. He felt as though he was watching a masterful destruction in detail of an enemy force: she picked the problem apart, broke it down, marshalled herself, and destroyed piece after piece until it was all gone.

The problem, initially, resisted her at several strongpoints: it was so large that it was bound to. But she worked the other angles, shifting around it and finding the key points which had to be removed in order to progress. Eventually she started to get it on the run and, with a sudden start, she had it all worked out.

"We have two primary objectives," she said, waiting for them all to nod agreement before continuing. "Number one is to survive - my objective is to facilitate that. Number two is linked to this quite heavily: we need to get off this planet. We need to let the fleet in orbit know that they still have boots on the ground, so that they work around that rather than writing off the whole assault force. That done, we need to do everything we can to make their invasion a success; if it fails a second time, they won't try again." Nods all round. "Secondary objective: link up with any other survivors, make sure we have all the firepower we need for whatever happens." Tawhid raised his hand, as he had been taught in the schola. "Tawhid."

"Can our radio reach orbit? If so, we should include command in our planning process." The Corporal nodded.

"Flight Officer, how's that going?"

"Perfectly," said Fioretti, carefully trimming off a little bit of stubble with a short razor. "I can bring the Lord-General himself online at your command."

"Is the channel secure?"

"I cannot vouch for that, I am afraid."

"Bring him up."

Lavandais

The bridge comm sounded, and Lavandais was alerted of this by an ensign. He picked up the receiver. "Who is this? Identify yourself."

"Flight Officer Fioretti, 408 Squadron, Sir. I survived the aerial ambush and am currently on the ground. Corporal Ademola, from Three Battalion of the Seventh Albyonian, has command."

"I'm glad to hear we've got some of you alive down there, Fioretti. Put her on."

"Sir." There was the sound of a brief movement from the other end, and then a new voice.

"This is Corporal Ademola. We haven't secured the channel, Sir; I recommend we use the encryption from the M41.996 codebook." Someone handed Lavandais the book in question.

"Proceed."

"Major culinary issue, ingredients everywhere, internal failure of recipe came from the hob. We have three jars of Marmite and a dot of leftover Mustard on a Tanith Rarebit, sir, though it's not nearly salty enough; we have a number of pepper-mills should we need to spice it up. Rations of Whisky are being served full-strength without worries, though the Old Constantinople may have to be watered down. We have four shot-glasses for the Old Constantinople, one of them teetotal. If there's any way you could direct us to a good brewery or social event, that would be greatly appreciated. Understood so far?"

"Understood, Corporal."

"We do not lack for confessionals, but so far none have confessed. We remain in the booth, awaiting a divine instruction to obey, but we also hope to be rewarded for our unflinching faith with ascension to heaven."

"Understood, Corporal. Host of angels may be unavailable, but salvation will be delivered through fair means or foul."

"...Understood, Sir." The radio disconnected.

"What does it sound like, sir?" Asked Mkinnon.

"The Skitarii betrayed them and they have no contact with other friendlies. They've got three sections of line infantry and a depleted section of light foot, with morale strong and a number of Browning support weapons available. Four troopers from the Ottmyns, including a Janissary, have reinforced them. Ammunition for the rifles is plentiful, but the Ottmyns are low on charges. They await orders, and would appreciate directions to any other survivors or areas where ammunition could be found. They are combat ready, and fully prepared to support an invasion. They are undetected by the enemy but no opportunities to gather information have arisen."

"We have code for that, Sir?"

"With room for nonsense words to boot, Captain. You know as well as I do that there's no such thing as a Tanith Rarebit."

"So what do we do, sir?"

"Much as I wish we could help them...the enemy will have air defenses primed and ready. Casualties would be unacceptable if we tried to evacuate them, or invade the spaceport, with airmobile units. Unless we suddenly receive the assistance of a Company from the Adeptus Astartes, I am afraid that Corporal Ademola and her platoon are on their own."

Siti

"...Understood, Sir." The radio cut off, and Akwete turned around. "Salvation, through fair means or foul. Host of angels unavailable. They're going to bomb the city, sink the island back into the ocean. We've got to get away from here." Scared murmurs filtered through the passage.

"Bombing?"

"No escape?"

"Fuck." Siti felt quite calm; Akwete hadn't led them wrong so far, and she would certainly try her best to get as many of the platoon out alive as possible. Greene, next to her, looked like she felt the same.

"Reckon we'll get out of this alive?" Greene shrugged.

"As long as yon Corporal's alive and we're alive, it stacks the odds in our favour. The rifles give us a boost, and then the Brownings give us even better odds than that until they run out of ammunition. Tell you what, how's about we change the subject; lass tae lass, what's up with you and the Corporal?"

Akwete

"We need to get to the docks. Find a sea-ship. Evacuate the city. We'll move in four groups for tactical flexibility, though if it comes to a major fight we're as good as dead. Greene, Tawhid, and Goldstein," she gestured to the three people in question, who stood up, "will be the group leaders. Tawhid has the lead section with his Cataphracts. Goldstein, you will lead the front-of-middle section, and provide support for Tawhid if we have to break through anything. Fioretti goes with you. Greene, your section will have the rear-of-middle and the flanks. My section is volunteer-only: we will take the Brownings and, if we are pursued, will attempt to cover the escape of the other sections. Understood?"

Siti volunteered immediately, as did the other survivors of Akwete's section. Four troopers from the Sixty-Second also volunteered: Myers and Vasquez, the only remaining Browning gunners; Stevensen, one of the grunts; and Gonzalez, who had manned a Browning during the retreat underground. They had four Brownings to hand out, and twenty cells for them: Myers, Vasquez and Gonzalez each got one, and Blayney - from Akwete's section - took the fourth. Five box cells each, putting out fifty shots apiece. Two hundred fifty shots per gun, with four rifles there to cover them and make sure they kept firing, and they would probably be able to hold down almost any position.

Unless we get a couple of stoppages. Or one of the gunners flakes out. Or there's a lucky shot. Or they bring in tanks. Or they have power armoured troops. Or, hell, if those cells are bad. We've no way to test them. Or if we're ambushed.

And once we run out of ammunition for these things, they're dead weight.

She pushed the doubts out of her mind for a while, and hoped Siti wasn't too scared.

They moved out within the hour, moving in a staggered file of muddy, bruised, tired bodies towards the docks. Tawhid and his men stayed on the front, rotating every so often to keep an alert soldier on point. The rearguard rotated similarly, sending pairs of riflemen backwards to sweep away the tracks with clumps of razor wire stuck on their bayonets.

Greene dropped back to discuss with Akwete about a change of course, because a section of the passageway had collapsed. They went round, and it cost them twenty minutes. They reached a section of broken terrain, where shelling had collapsed a hab-block rated for two thousand people.

They set up camp there, since it was preferable to camping in the enclosed space deeper underground. The real bonus of the place was that it still had running water, after a fashion - Greene opened a hole in a pipe with her knife, and all of a sudden they had cold, brackish water to wash with. The Ottmyns excused themselves while the others - more used to mixed quarters - made the most of the luxury.

The next day, they moved out before dawn.

Mkinnon

Mkinnon was disagreeing with a Lord-General. "Sir, we can't just destroy that spaceport. We have boots on the ground down there, and I've heard the stories about what a group of Light Foot with a plan can do."

"I was raised on the same stories, Captain; I've heard all about the legendary Ibram Gaunt and his Ghosts. He helped raise these regiments, he inspected them two years ago, and I do not doubt that he would want them to be allowed to do their jobs until death took them. But - Captain, I cannot stress this enough - saving that platoon would cost us battalions of men. It's just not worth it."

"Sir, they have intelligence…"

"Captain, they have intelligence on a city which we fully intend to destroy. There is no conceivable circumstance under which it would be viable to -" The intercom buzzed, and a voice came on. It was DuFresne, who Mkinnon had left in charge of the bridge while he talked to Lavandais.

"Captain, Lord-General: the Astartes vessel Cruciform has entered the system. They are requesting an audience."

They met the Astartes in the main hangar. Mkinnon had encountered the Emperor's Angels of Death only once before, in the form of a squad from the Novamarines; the similarity between those men and these killers was not even skin-deep.

Red eye lenses burned like hot coals in black helmets, and white shoulderpads served as a background for dark, foreboding symbols of determined violence. Crosses and skulls, and numerals. Heavy wrought-iron chains were wrapped around their forearms and their gauntlets, binding them to their weapons with thick links of metal.

Mkinnon was not put at ease by them; Lavandais, on the other hand, seemed unconcerned.

Their leader stepped forth. He was huge, even for an Astartes; his weapon, an eagle-headed mace engraved with intricate scrollwork, dwarfed the human commanders. "I am Chaplain Uilliam. With me are fifty Astartes of the Black Templars, with a full load of weaponry and ammunition. My Sword Brethren: Waldemarr, bearer of the blade Durandal, Raeburn of the Bloodied Tabard, Renard, Hero of the Corinth Passage, Theodoric, Destroyer of the dread dæmon engine Bukavac, and finally but by no means junior to the others, Terminator Brother Sigfrid, Reaper of Heretics." The five Sword Brethren - with the exception of Sigfrid, whose armour would not permit the motion - nodded greetings. Lavandais stepped forward.

"Lord-General Erwin Lavandais, currently commanding the Ninth and Fifteenth Battalions of the Ottmyn Sky Cataphracts, the Seventh and Sixty-Second Albyonian Regiments of Foot, and 77 Commando of the Albyonian Regiment of Marines. With me is Captain Mkinnon, Captain of this vessel." Mkinnon made the sign of the Aquila.

"Lord."

"Captain. May we have access to your bridge? It seems wise to integrate us in the operation at the earliest opportunity."

"There is no ground operation, Astartes," said Lavandais, "It was deemed impracticable."

"There is now a ground operation, Lord-General," said the demigod, "these orders come directly from the Lord-Executor."

The hangars were a buzz of activity as men hurried to prepare themselves. 77 Commando had officially handed control of shipboard defense to the naval armsmen; their low-velocity stubbers and shock batons had been replaced with fully-automatic MNLE-80 repeating lascarbines, MNLE-81 heavy support guns, and 2.7-foot chainblades. The remaining Ottmyns offered benedictions to the spirits of their arc guns, and the various troopers of the Sixty-Second and the Seventh equipped themselves with vicious close melee weapons and liquid courage: trench clubs changed hands, flasks of spirits were exchanged, and bayonets were fixed to the ends of rifles.

-_-_-

Uilliam

Uilliam led his brothers in prayer as they prepared themselves for death. To a human, the interior of the chapel would have appeared pitch-black; to the Astartes, it was bright as day.

"Brothers," he began, softly, knowing that they heard him. "Brothers, today we have found our quarry!"

"No pity," began the assembled Brothers, a soft rumble of coming fury.

"He - nay, it - has hidden itself on this world! It has burrowed itself into the hearts of the populace as a parasite burrows itself into flesh! But these mortals allowed it in, and by that failure they are set against us."

"No remorse," continued the fifty Brothers.

"And we - by the will of the Emperor - shall reach into their hearts and tear it out! We shall burn it from its holes, cleanse this city, and crush our hated quarry, for it cannot hide from our fury or stay our blessed wrath!"

"No fear," finished the Brothers, and then again: "No fear!"

"Let us burn it, Brothers! Let us burn it all!"

"No pity!"

"Let our blades run with its black blood!"

"No remorse!"

"Let us crush it, let us be not swayed by it, let it fall before us!"

"No fear! No pity! No remorse! No fear! No pity! No remorse! No fear!"

"No pity! No remorse! No fear!"

"Let it burn!"

Akwete

The radio crackled, and Akwete picked it up. "Corporal Ademola, commanding scratch platoon on the surface."

"Corporal, we're dropping troops. This is Captain Mkinnon on the Lord Executor, telling you that if you value your lives you'll stay under cover: we've got fifty Astartes in the first wave, and they don't seem the type to check each silhouette."

"Anything we can do to assist the landing, Sir?"

"You can stay out of the fire, Corporal. You've done more than anyone could ask of you just surviving and getting a report through to us. Saving Flight Officer Fioretti, and keeping him alive, is the cherry on the cake. There'll be a promotion and a medal in this for you; I'd say that your job is to stay alive long enough to enjoy it. Bunker down, and we'll send a flight of Valkyries to pick you up once the skies are clear."

"Yes, Sir. We'll fortify a position nearby; mind telling us where the landing will hit?"

"I can't say on this channel. I can say that it's going to be loud when it happens, and it will move quickly, so stay mobile."

Uilliam

The drop pods launched, and a swarm of eighty metal capsules slammed into the atmosphere at such speed that the air molecules themselves could not move out of the way in time.

Uilliam stood still.

Surface-to-air missiles began firing, again and again, smashing empty drop pods apart with vicious effectiveness.

Uilliam stood still.

Thunderhawks and Stormtalons swept around the swarm, engaging enemy high-orbit fighters, and then heldrakes, as the atmosphere thickened around them. Thrusters went off, slowing the speed at which the drop pods struck the ground from biblical to merely bone-shattering, g-forces rippling across enhanced flesh.

The drop pod smashed into the ground at speeds which would obliterate everything on board by smashing it through the top of the pod.

Uilliam stood still, save for flipping the safety on his bolter from 'safe' to the other setting.

The pod doors burst open, and Uilliam moved.

The first enemy to oppose him died before he was even out of the pod, simply exploding into chunks of meat to the tune of the pod's storm bolter. Lasbeams, poorly aimed, spiked off his armour, and he responded in brutal kind. His bolter barked incessantly, spitting rounds into the enemy position: not one missed. Empty shell casings littered the ground. He kept firing, kept killing, and then his bolter ran dry - by the time the final round had struck home, he had reloaded.

The Black Templars were zealous, aye - but they were still Sons of Dorn. Bolter mastery was in their blood. More Brothers stormed from the pods, and the enemy continued to die.

Greene

Greene heard the sounds of gunfire through the concrete above them, but didn't feel particularly worried. The enemy was taking fire, from boltguns if she heard right; it was all going to be alright.

Uilliam

Uilliam could feel the enemy here, scratching at his mind with its lithe little claws. He slammed his shoulder into a large enemy, bowling it over, and fired point-blank into the skull of another. Something glanced from his shoulder pad, defacing the emblem of the Chapter. His sensorium warned him of more projectiles inbound, and he rolled, smashing into a knot of the enemy and using them as crude cover as he returned fire. The barrage smashed the whole lot of them to meat.

Valkyries swooped overhead, depositing their payloads of Marines and Sky Cataphracts via grav-chutes and ropes: the Thunderhawks of his strike force followed, firing heavy bolters and lascannon, saving their missiles for the right time. One of them fired its battle cannon and a fortification vanished in a plume of rubble. Marines advanced behind him, firing their carbines and slashing with chainswords. Sky Cataphracts supported them, unleashing occasional bursts of arc fire, burning the enemy down where they stood and bursting them apart like so much offal. The Sky Cataphracts had formed a large part of the main assault; their Colonel had been on the ground during the Skitarii's betrayal. These men had a vendetta to settle.

A number of enemies converged on him, identifying him as a nexus point of the assault; he recognized them as Sicarian-class Skitarii units. Some of them, armed with automatic pistols, fired: light bolt rounds skittered off his armour, while flechettes embedded themselves; none did any meaningful damage. They maintained their fire as they closed, and he met them with bolter and combat blade. Meeting a descending sword with the monomolecular edge, he parried and drove forward, using his step to snap the machine's leg like balsa wood. Another weapon, wreathed in a power field, burst into nothingness on the protective field of his rosarius. That attacker, not deterred, moved in closer and was blown in half by a bolt round. Raeburn moved past him, axe moving in wide sweeps, the bolter element of his combi-flamer barking out a merry tune. The flamer added its voice, briefly, to the chorus; an entire squad became flaming marionettes. Lasfire spiked from behind, cutting down another swathe of the foe, and the resolve of the horde was - finally - broken. They turned, and fled the field of battle.

Uilliam smiled: there would be no escape for them, not with his Brothers on the hunt. But he still had unfinished business with their leader, and no report indicated that that leader, or his bodyguard, were among the dead.

Fioretti

The Valkyrie came shortly after the gunfire stopped, and Fioretti went to greet them. The pilot - a young lady with her hair tied back in a formal bun - saluted down to him. "Sir!"

"Hands on the controls, young lady," he admonished her good-naturedly. She smiled. Her right hand returned to the cockpit.

"Where are the other soldiers?" Fioretti frowned.

"Other soldiers?"

"The others, the ones you were with."

"Hmm. That call was classified, pilot. Did Mklusky tell you about it? I bet he did, that old dog."

"Yes, that was him. Mklusky."

"Ah, Mklusky. In all my years in the Navy…"

"Could you get on board? We don't have much time."

"...Let me finish, Miss. In all my years in the Navy...I have never heard of anyone called Mklusky." He drew his sidearm, but she was quicker: by the time he'd drawn a bead, she had already fired.

Greene

Greene saw Fioretti go down, and fired a full charge into the pilot. Around her, the others with rifles fired as well - the noise was deafening. All around the ship, troopers opened up, ejecting cells with each shot because of the raised ammunition consumption inherent in firing an overcharged blast. The Ottmyns sprinted across the open ground towards Fioretti's prone form; they aimed to drag him out of the way of the firefight.

They never got the chance: the valkyrie's guns opened up and three of them were cut to pieces. The final one threw himself to the ground and began crawling as quickly as he could towards Fioretti.

The back door of the Valkyrie blew out to the tune of a breaching charge, and enemies rushed out of it, straight into the fire of the group to the rear of the aircraft. Overcharged blasts, and fire from Vasquez' Browning, met them in a hail of rounds that could punch through a light tank.

The Chaos Marines, in their blue-grey power armour, shrugged it off like a light rainshower. Their bolters were rather more effective.

Uilliam

There was a wall in his way, but it was quite thin. He went through, and out the other side. A straggler from the routing enemy forces tried to stop him, and was simply obliterated by his armoured bulk. He had felt the presence, ever since his arrival in the system, and now it was getting stronger. He kept moving...he he heard them...he saw them.

Akwete

The Legionnaires hit Vasquez' firebase, and Akwete realised that they were all as good as dead. "Grenades," she roared, "Kraks if you've got them!" To her soldiers' credit, they held their ground and their fire discipline, though Vasquez' team tried to run. It didn't save any of them, and perhaps that galvanised the rest.

Stevensen, leaning out of cover, took a bolt round and his handsome blonde features vanished into a pulped red ruin spread across Myers, who shrieked. He threw himself out of cover, completely unhinged, and fired wildly for a half second before a blast of unnaturally blue lightning turned him into a gibbering pile of flesh.

Before Akwete could stop her, Siti ran for his Browning. Akwete shrieked, spun out of her cover and fired wildly, hoping to distract their attention long enough for -

A great, armoured form burst from the rubble behind her and plowed into the enemy, trailing a hammer wreathed in actinic fury.

Uilliam

Uilliam left the stunned guardsmen behind, and began to kill.

The enemy were still Astartes, so he showed more care than he had with the mortal rabble; he used the finest weapon at his disposal, his two-handed Crozius Aquiline. The energised head licked out and smashed a skull, and the same momentum carried it back into a two-handed grip. Looping it overhead, he brought it down: the wing of the aquila forming its end bit deep into a collarbone before being wrenched free in a spray of gore. This opponent would keep fighting through that, naturally, but it would not fight through a crushed ribcage. He shouldered it into the ground and stamped through its chest as he kept moving. Their armour was weak, in need of repair - it would never be repaired. The alloys would be melted down with blessed oils, forged into new suits. Using intact pieces posed too great a risk of corruption.

As his train of thought ran, three more died; one fleeing, two fighting. He kneecapped one more, and then took another's arm, and then…

Akwete

Akwete fired on overcharge, Siti beside her using the Browning. The weapon was traditionally used for anti-infantry support, but it had been designed with light anti-vehicle duties in mind as well; it barely slowed the enemy down, but it broke their stride and that was all that was needed to give the friendly Astartes an edge. The armoured figure with his hammer was killing at a phenomenal pace, cutting down one which tried to flee, then knocking two to the ground with one blow and killing them in passing. He smashed an enemy's knees into nonexistence, and then ripped off an arm with a blow of his hammer.

He never saw the other one coming; it smashed into him, knocking him onto his back, convulsed, and fell off him in a puff of superheated blood and ablated plating. He went to stand up, but an arc of lightning came out of nowhere.

His eye-lenses blew out, his armour sparked its life away, and he did not get up. The enemy which had made the lightning, which had turned Myers into a pool of shrieking flesh on the concrete, which had crushed Vasquez' skull with one hand, raised a spear made of snakeskin and adamantium and stabbed him twice in the chest.

He went still, and the creature turned to them. The last Chaos Marine faced them: every one of its allies lay dead or dying, and the guardsmen still had ammunition, though not much.

Akwete knew that it wasn't going to be enough. She knew that a lot of them were going to die. She knew that she was going to be among the dead, because that was her job. She knew that this thing was going to live.

Drawing a conclusion which seemed bizarre even to her, she fixed her bayonet.

…

One of the Imperials broke cover, and moved towards him at what was probably a sprint for it.

He raised his oldest friend: the spear holding the essence of his oldest enemy. This was almost too easy. The enemy was yelling something, which he translated for a moment's amusement.

He wasn't entirely sure what Albyon was, or what the Seventh was. He knew what a City was, of course, but that seemed irrelevant; how could such a structure run?

Mortals shouted the strangest things. He straightened his arm, focused slightly…

Akwete

Akwete's boots thumped across the concrete. She couldn't hear anything. She was pretty sure she was yelling something. The enemy levelled its spear, and she closed her eyes.

Siti

Siti felt herself vaulting over the cover she was hidden behind, Browning in hand, trying to draw a bead on the one with the spear. Akwete was out front, and that thing was getting ready to fire the same energy which had killed Myers. She yelled something, but she wasn't quite sure what it was.

Fioretti

Fioretti was in unbelievable pain, but it was muted by the catastrophic trauma and the blood loss. He drifted across the edge of consciousness long enough to feel some movement beside him, and hear a voice say, "Blessed-"

Then he was unconscious again.

…

He felt the power coming, though it was a little more difficult than usual. He supposed that the barrier between worlds was thickening a little, but it made no difference. He had power enough, and even if he were stripped of all his abilities he would be able to crush this gnat underfoot. The Gods had blessed him, truly, with such strength.

"Blessed," said the Janissary, "is His name. Current date unknown." He spun, and the strange contraption attached to the bottom of the armoured mortal's weapon glowed bright.

The Janissary

"Blessed," said Tawhid 038, "is His name. Current date unknown." He fired.

The effect was immediate, and he felt the weapon shuddering in his hands as its energy played across the monstrous thing. Eye-lenses blew out, the spear shattered into unholy fire, and the armour plates split as something forced its way out.

...Praise Be Praise Be Worship It Embrace It

No. Please, not this. Not this…

His last act as himself was to lash out with a distending, tumorous arm and strike the armoured mortal in the faceplate, sending it flying away.

Akwete

Akwete saw Tawhid flying away, neck bent at a bizarre angle, and yelled something she wasn't quite sure as to the meaning of. The Chaos Marine was changing, gasping for breath, and then it doubled over and burst apart.

What was left redefined Akwete's perception of the word 'monster' in a fraction of a second. She had always thought of monsters as something under the bed, something which she could scare away by turning on the light.

The lights were on, and she could see the monster all the better for it. She couldn't scream. She couldn't move.

Siti was behind her, on the hill, hopefully running like hell.

Akwete raised her weapon to her shoulder, fired, worked the bolt, and fired again.

The first time she had asked her father to look for monsters under her bed, he had given her a knife from the kitchen and helped her move the bed over so she could look.

The second time, he had taken her to the living room and trained her to get good groupings on little monster-shaped targets, especially at close ranges on a time limit.

He had been a pretty cool dad.

She fired, worked the bolt, fired, worked the bolt.

She had seen a weird little thing in the recruiting officer's hair, and she'd thought it might be a monster; it hadn't been, it had been a perm. During the bad bits of training - the beatings, the ostracism, the forced isolation - there had been monsters under her bed and in her locker, and hiding up against the walls.

She'd fixed her bayonet and kicked the bed aside to face them. She'd pushed the clothes in the locker aside with the tip of her rifle, and on one memorable occasion she'd stabbed clean through a plasterboard partition.

She fired, worked the bolt, and reloaded as it turned, in its lumbering way, to face her.

Lasfire began thumping into it from more weapons as the remainders of the other groups moved into position. Greene moved up alongside her, firing with her middle finger to work the bolt more quickly, the lasburn on her temple flicking up and down as her eye refocused with each shot.

There were no heavy weapons firing, and that gave her hope: perhaps Siti was running.

The creature loped towards them, crunching over the superhuman corpses as it raced to close the distance.

"Bayonets! Bayonets and close order!"

Her command was obeyed almost instantly. She dropped to one knee, fired one final shot, worked the bolt, and braced the stock of the rifle in her armpit. Behind her, someone braced their rifle into their shoulder and leaned into it.

Close order bayonet drill was a rarity in Albyonian regiments, but it had its uses. Their rifles, with bayonets fixed, equalled the length of a short spear, and a formation of spears had always been - would always be - the best way to kill something with momentum behind it.

Akwete's perception narrowed to a straight line between herself, her bayonet, and the enemy. It came on, breath misting slightly in the early morning air.

It breathes, she thought with some surprise.

Someone screamed, but they held their ground while they screamed and that was all that mattered.

Akwete closed her eyes and tried to picture something, anything, other than her imminent death.

Siti. She opened her eyes.

An overcharged round punched into its mouth, spinning it back into itself. Another round took off one of the spines along its back. A third one tore a chunk from its twitching foreleg. The entire section, in close order, unloaded their ammunition into it, spreading out around it and firing again and again until nothing was left but a stain on the ground.

Valkyries and Thunderhawks flew low overhead, and an Astartes took the superhuman corpses into hold. A medic hurried the Janissary, and Fioretti, away.

They were all stood there in something of a daze, until Siti walked up to Akwete.

Siti

Siti wasn't quite sure what to say, but she felt like she should say something. "Corporal", perhaps, or maybe something more casual; "Awkete". She turned to Akwete. "Well," she began.

Akwete twisted her up in a bone-crunching hug, and held her close for one of the little half-seconds that take a while to register with those involved.

They held each other at a slightly less intimate distance while the half-second processed; having processed it, they folded in closer again and pressed their lips together until the evac valkyrie blew dust in their eyes and they broke apart, laughing.

Captain Cai Mkinnon

The Lord Executor broke orbit three days later, leaving behind a bombed and damaged, but mostly intact, city. Food exports from the planet would resume within the month, and already farmers were saving up their surplus in Munitorum warehouses for that time. The majority of the survivors were in the hold, returning to their bases various, though there were a few exceptions; some soldiers AWOL, and some soldiers honourably discharged for actions above and beyond the call of duty. "Sergeant Major, are the troops all accounted for?"

Sergeant Major Lou Greene nodded. "All accounted for, Sir. Billets are full, armouries are ready, and the Black Templars just broke orbit. If we hurry, we can use their Warp breach and save the fuel."

Captain Cai Mkinnon nodded. "Navigator Westchnienie, plot us a course."

Flight Officer Alejandro Fioretti

Fioretti sat up slowly, wincing as his chest did something it hadn't been ready for. He sipped from the water next to him.

The Janissary was sat by his bed, in a wheelchair. "Ah," said Fioretti, "you too?"

The Janissary shook his head. "Worse for me. Legs, arms, none work. I'll be having augmetics at some point...maybe. The doctors don't know." He couldn't slump, but he seemed to anyway. "I need some coffee." Fioretti, wincing, removed his covers.

"Tell you what," he said, "I think I can walk. Shall we avoid troubling the nurses?"

The Janissary nodded, the only movement he was capable of, and they made their slow way towards the canteen.

-_-_-

...

The house was dark, and the movement was silent. The figure moved past the threshold, and the other figure followed.

The figure turned on the lights, and there, in front of her, was a table laid with grain and cabbage, chunks of fried mushroom and some fish.

Akwete slid her arms round Siti's waist.

Some time later, they got around to eating the meal, which was just as good cold.

Somewhere, in a Cave

The man, who was much taller than other men, stood and stretched. He scratched a little numeral on the wall, and stood as far back as he could. "Is it finished already?" He asked the empty cave, which did not answer.

The man stood at the mouth of the cave, enjoying the feel of the warm desert air. "I would like," he said to the desert, "to come across a town of some sort."

The skulls on the clifftop looked down at him proudly as he left.


End file.
